edition

Siyuan Chen

English 101

Wendy Schoener

Assignment#1

9-12-2014

Worldliness and Worldview

Teachers who have pursued teaching as their lifetime profession has a responsibility of changing the life of a student in order to enable him/her to have a better future.

Rebekan Nathan was a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University and as an author of Voyages she spent her professional life living overseas in a village location. Rebekan Nathan went to AnyU where she lived with a group of international and Native American Students and she prepared herself to write a book titled “My Freshman Year”. This book discusses Rebekan Nathan life when she was in college.

In her book, Nathan reports that she was interested on the perception of the Native American students towards international students especially on the questions which they asked. In addition to this, Nathan was interested on the perception of the International students towards American native students. Nathan conducted her study through an interview and she got different responses from those whom she interview, for example, a Japanese student said that, most of the Japanese students know little about their country because they are far away from their home country. In addition to this, the student said that Japanese students living in U.S have no idea about Middle East and they keep on asking themselves, who is Ninja?

On their side, UAE’s student said “American students are nice, but they need to stop being so ignorant about other countries and other cultures”. Chinese students said “Americans know very little about China or its culture. Most people think China is still very poor and very communist-controlled, with no freedom”. Lastly, a Malaysia student said“When I tell people that I am Muslim they take me for granted and conclude that I am an Arab. How can they not realize that not all Muslims are Arabs when they have many Muslims here who are Americans?”

On their side, American Students know little about other cultures and they are curious to know about cultures of different countries. As a result of this, American students ask a lot of questions especially about countries and cultural practices of international students. According to Nathan, learning cultures of different countries is a good thing but one should not ask a lot of questions that surfaces the differences between one another. To Nathan, International students come to America because they want to get the best education, thus asking them about their cultures makes them proud and that is why they are free to talk about it. In addition to this, International student cannot understand why Americans do not use computer to help them find the answer if they really don’t know.

On the other hand, some of the International students who have stayed in America for more than 3 years are not proud of their cultures and they don’t like talking about it. A good example of this group of students is a Chinese student who will not be ready to answer questions asked by American students such as “is China poor right now? Is there freedom in China? Is TaiWan a Chinese?

In Nathan’s opinion, Americans believe they are in the best country and English is most popular language in the world. Every time he meets a new American friends and he tells them about his country. When more and more Americans ask him the same questions, in which he feels bad, he cannot tell them what he is thinking and feeling, because it is rude and unethical. Nathan likes some American cultures more than his own Chinese culture for example he likes NBA, single, and movie. As an international student he watches this from the internet and he believes most of information from the internet is true.

In his book “My Freshman Year”, Nathan tells us the story that was happening in the college, and we can realize that American student thinking and international students think differently. It is quite evident that, different countries have different cultures and this influences the life of the student. For example, an American student tries to know more information about others countries and as he/she continues to learn about her American Culture. This is also evident among international students who keep on learning about American cultures and as he/she tries to spread cultural beliefs and activities of his/her country to Americans or to other international students. That might be the best way to improve everybody and our respective countries.